


A Matter of Habit

by scioscribe



Category: The Hateful Eight (2015)
Genre: Dubiously Consensual Blow Jobs, Handcuffs, M/M, Post-Canon, Rough Sex
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-10-10
Updated: 2018-10-10
Packaged: 2019-07-28 21:23:23
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,305
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16250066
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/scioscribe/pseuds/scioscribe
Summary: Warren fetches Mannix out of jail.  He wouldn't say he's bailing him out, though.  Not exactly.





	A Matter of Habit

**Author's Note:**

  * For [linndechir](https://archiveofourown.org/users/linndechir/gifts).



There was hard-packed snow on the soles of Warren’s boots.  It gave his footsteps an ominous sound, a dry little crunch like the breaking of a bone.  No way to get through a Wyoming winter without that sound, but he flattered himself that it sounded more violent on him than on most.  He figured Chris Mannix could hear him coming down the length of that hoosegow—could hear him and know who it was—and he took a little extra pleasure in that.

And sure enough, when he got to the last cell and put himself in full view, there wasn’t a trace of surprise on Mannix’s face.  More resignation, like he was a puppy who’d messed the house somewhere.

Warren would say this much for him: that tail-between-his-legs look didn’t come across in that fool voice of his, which was as much butter and honey and cornpone as ever.

“Now, major, are we good enough friends after all that you’ve come to pay me a visit in all my troubles?  You know, I thought it was cold in here, but that warms my heart right up.”

Warren smiled.  “Does you good, doesn’t it?”

“It surely does.”  Mannix craned his head around as far as it would go trying to see the door Warren had come in through.  “How’d you get that deputy to let you in here?”

“I offered him a little monetary persuasion—fancy way of saying a bribe, hillbilly—to go off somewhere a while, maybe discover he had the shits and was so overcome with it he had to hole up in an outhouse for an hour or so.  I told him that you being bottled up here warmed _my_ heart, you being who you were, and that I couldn’t say as I’d mind getting a moment or two alone with you.”  He took out his pipe and began to load it, tamping down the tobacco.  Taking his time.  And he liked the way Mannix’s gaze lingered on his fingers and that pipe like he wasn’t sure which he wanted more.  “He didn’t have any trouble believing that, of course.  I mean, I asked him if you’d mentioned your daddy, figuring you had, and he allowed as to how he’d heard about all he could stand of Erskine Mannix.”

He exhaled a ring of smoke through the bars and Mannix turned to follow its direction.  If he thought that hid the flush on his face, he was sorely mistaken.

“I would have thought,” Warren said casually, “that I’d broken you a little of that habit.  Of rattling on about your daddy like he was God’s gift.”

Mannix’s eyes darkened a shade, like they always did when he was enjoying himself or had a mind to get roughed up.  “Major, we might’ve worked together a time or two, but that don’t give you license to break me of so much of a habit of biting my fucking fingernails.  No, sir.”

“And that’s why you lit off, then.  Not wanting me to break you of certain habits.”

That blush of his deepened.  Warren bet he could get him all the way to puce without too much trouble.

“I didn’t light off,” Mannix said.  “I just had places to be.”

“Places like Red Rock,” Warren said pleasantly.

“A sheriff’s got proper duties, major, not like a bounty hunter who gets to range all over creation—”

“Now, I won’t say that I hurried back in that direction,” Warren said, “you not being worth that kind of trouble, but I did wash up there a couple of months afterwards, dragging a bunch of stiffs along behind me on a string, and to be honest, Chris—”

Mannix scoffed at that.

“—I was thinking I’d find you married and with your wife all swollen up in the belly like you’d crammed a melon down there in your fucking haste to prove how damned natural you were.  Except,” and he punctuated this with another long drag on his pipe, “I instead heard tell you’d left.  In a real fucking hurry, too, like somebody’d lit a fire under your ass.  Or maybe just played with it a little and let you know how much you liked it.”

“I don’t know what the hell you’re talking about, major,” Mannix said.  And so much for puce, because now the color had run all the way out of him, making him an even uglier fish-belly white than usual, except for these two spots of color high up on his cheeks.

Warren was through having fun, or anyway through having the kind of fun that wasn’t mean.  He smiled a hearty smile.  “I’ll use short little words then, white boy, so you can maybe put the pieces together.  And I’ll talk slow.”

He did.

The trouble, so far as Warren was concerned, was less that Mannix had vanished on him and more that Mannix had said he’d help with pointing out some hick white boy he’d met on a stagecoach, one who’d earned himself a pretty two thousand dollar bounty on his head, and then Mannix fucking hadn’t.  And all for the chickenshit reason that one thing had come to a-fucking-nother and the two of them had grappled around in the dirt some.  Mannix had wound up bare-assed and down on his elbows, hard-cocked and cussing, and Warren had jerked himself off onto that upturned white ass and then used his come to slick the way to opening Mannix up a little, just a couple fingers, and Mannix had moaned for him nice and pretty, better than any whore, and come in his own hand.

Warren had neither the time nor the inclination to coddle him for wanting what he so obviously fucking wanted, so he’d laughed at him and patted that pretty ass of his and gone to bed, and in the morning, Mannix had been gone.  And that had been a real damn inconvenience for him—inasmuch as anything Mannix did could push his day in one direction or another.

So he’d had to give up that nice little two thousand dollar bounty.  That had pissed him off.  And it had pissed him off to finally circle back around to Red Rock and find Mannix up and gone almost since that night by the fire, like the son-of-a-bitch had thought Warren was going to come looking for him or some shit.

“Now, you remember all that, don’t you?” Warren said.  Mannix was almost swaying with the recollection of it all, his cock an obvious bulge in his pants.  “Yeah, you do.”

Mannix touched his tongue to his lips, but it didn’t seem to wet his mouth any.  “Yeah.  All right.”

Get his cock free, Warren supposed, and Mannix would have come right then as easy as pulling a trigger, and that was flattering enough, but he wasn’t sure he liked this ghost-pale version half as well as the red-faced, dark-eyed one who thought he could fight and grin and bullshit his way out of what it meant to get fucked by a black man.  He didn’t know why.  He would have said, before, that he preferred them beaten—the more thoroughly beaten the better.

He didn’t like making an exception for Chris fucking Mannix, no matter what they’d been through together.  But there it was.  He wanted the quality of this particular victory to be a little different than the others.

He ought to walk away right now and leave Mannix there to hang, drop from the gallows right into the hot coals of hell.

Instead, he said, “If you were in here for anything you’d done that I gave a shit about it, I’d let you swing and whistle while you died.  But it's a disappointment to me, I’ll admit, that they have you in here for killing another cracker.  In a bar fight, no less.  Like that’s the only shit you did that’s worth hanging you for.”

A little spark of life came back into Mannix right along with that shit-eating grin.  “Saying you’d let me swing if I was here for something else—that imply you ain’t gonna let me swing now?”

“It implies I’m thinking about it,” Warren said.  He puffed a little more smoke out, not bothering to pretty it up this time, and then he dampened his pipe and pocketed it.  Time to get down to business.

Mannix wasn’t so dumb he didn’t understand the look on Warren’s face, but he was dumb enough to think he could maybe talk his way out of Warren meaning it.  “Right, then, you slide open this door and I’ll unpeel just as many bills as you want from out of my wallet and we’ll—”

“I don’t want your money, white boy.  And, as a matter of fact, I doubt this pissant little jail’s left you with any.  Hell, relieving you of your valuables would be the first thing most of them would try.”  He reached in through the bars and his gloved hand met Mannix’s jaw, ran down along his chin until he took it between two fingers and hiked it up, forcing Mannix to meet his eyes.  “You know the one kind of bargain I’m willing to strike with white Southern crackers in trouble.”

Mannix swallowed and Warren felt the faint twitch of his throat against his hand.  “As I recall, even _if_ that happened, you didn’t exactly do your share.”

“That’s true.”  He took his hand back, hooked his thumbs through his belt.  “I suppose you’ll just have to take your chances.”

Mannix looked at him steadily, sizing it all up.  Then he smiled, hard-lipped and almost mocking, like it was his right to be in on the joke.

“Just take my chance and trust you,” Mannix said, all sing-song.  “Well, then.  I guess I just don’t have a choice, do I?”

Warren shrugged.  “You could hang.”  He undid his handcuffs from where they dangled at his side.  “Or you could put your hands out through those bars.”

That silence would have worried a lesser man.

Then, slowly, Mannix stretched out his hands.

Warren cuffed one wrist and then the other, yanked the chain about just to hear it rattle against the bar between Mannix’s bound hands.  It was a sound that couldn’t fail to kindle up his blood.

“There you go.  Good boy.  I took my gloves off, I bet I could feel your pulse going like the fucking clappers, couldn’t I?”  He unbuttoned Mannix’s shirt a little, a couple buttons' worth, just to toy with him.  “Get on your knees.”

“You sure that deputy’s gonna stay gone?”

“I’m sure.”  He jerked the chain forward, pulling Mannix up against the bars.  If he wanted to, he could stroke Mannix’s hard-on right then, but he didn’t.  He liked the look of it too much.

Mannix didn’t beg him for it, either—probably too afraid of what would happen if he ever got all of what he was desperate, let alone if he got it all at once.  He just lowered himself to the ground, Warren letting his hands down at the same time.

But not all the way.  Mannix looked best with his arms stretched up above his head.  Made him look like he was begging, like he wanted Warren’s cock so badly he was downright pleading for it.

Warren held him like that with one hand and undid his belt and trousers with the other.

Mannix didn’t even wait for Warren to tell him what to do.  He put all his weight on his hands and used Warren’s grip on the chain to pull him backwards, closer to the bars, a dumbass trick that only worked because Warren wouldn’t let go, because Warren was going exactly where he wanted, and then Mannix surged forward.  He must have been doing more damage to himself than Warren had even thought of.  That might just light a fire that would burn him all the way to the ground, Chris Mannix carving grooves into his own wrists and all but yanking his arms out their sockets just to suck Warren’s cock like it had been his own fucking idea.

Warren gave him a little more slack just for that.  A reward.  Mannix pressed his lips against the head of his cock and from the look on his face, he’d have put his hands up to beg for this after all: that was the only compensation he seemed much interested in.  Anybody looking at him would have taken that little bit of slick on Warren’s cock for honey and ambrosia.

Mannix took all of him then.  His mouth was as hot and tight as anything Warren had ever known, and when he looked down at one point and saw Mannix all smashed up against the cell bars, his cheek brutally crushed against one of them, he thought he hadn’t liked anything so well since he’d heard those screams at Wellenbeck.  Mannix’s eyes were closed and his lips were red.  And if Warren had just let him go on and do this all those months back, he figured they wouldn’t have ever had this problem in the first place.  There was no way Chris Mannix would walk away from having his mouth fucked this way.  Not out of fear or pride or anything else.

“There you go, Chris,” Warren said to him, low and warm.  “You’re doing just right.”

He pulled Mannix’s arms up nice and slow until Mannix’s hands were even with his own mouth and then he leaned forward and nipped just the tiniest bit of the skin on Mannix’s knuckles.  Mannix let out the prettiest whimper around his cock he’d ever heard and that was it.  Warren felt like lightning had flashed down through him.  He came like that, holding Mannix’s hands up above his head, feeling Mannix’s throat spasm tight around him.

And then he let go.

Mannix sagged back down, his hands dropping almost to the floor.  His mouth was bruised, but not half so raw as his wrists, and he’d given himself a hell of a shiner on his cheek from squeezing up so tight against the bars to get whatever angle he’d been after.

If Warren had a sketch of him looking like this, he wouldn’t ever jerk off to anything else.

“Come on.”  He’d gotten a damn-fool gentleness in his voice all of a sudden.  A blowjob always did put him in a good mood.  "Stand up.”

Mannix looked at him cautiously but did as he was told, feeling his way up the bars, a tight little wince on his face.

Warren traced the bruise on his cheek.  “That hurt?”

“Yes, sir.”

He moved his thumb to Mannix’s mouth and Mannix seemed to kiss it almost reflexively, like he had no choice in the matter.  Maybe it was easier for both of them to think that.

Warren went lower this time and undid Mannix’s pants until they fell down around his ankles.  He took Mannix’s cock in his hand and contemplated teasing him—nothing Mannix could do about it under the circumstances, bound up as he was—but this whole fucking thing had taken too much time already.  And he didn’t have that much interest in Mannix’s cock, truth be told.  He was just in what you’d call a generous frame of mind.

He stroked Mannix off, letting his thoughts already drift to what would need to be done to get them out of this place, and once Mannix had come, Warren undid the cuffs and restored them to their place at his belt.  Mannix hitched his pants back up and buttoned them.

Warren waited for Mannix to ask if he was really going to let him go, but Mannix didn’t say a word.  He always did understand Warren a little better than Warren wanted him to.

So he took the keys from out of his pocket and unlocked the cell door.

“Every now and then, on a whim,” he said, “I keep a promise or two.”

Mannix made sure to step safely out of the cell before he _did_ decide to run his mouth.  “You like to think you’re unpredictable, is that it?”

Warren raised his eyebrows.  “You gonna tell me you saw this coming, Chris Mannix?”

“Well, not from the start, not the part about you coming in the first place, but once you showed up?  You bet your ass, major.  Or _mine_ , I suppose, considering your tastes.”  He went over to the little wardrobe at the end of the empty jail and rummaged around inside it, coming up with his gun and knife.  No wallet, like Warren had already warned him, but he shrugged that off philosophically enough.  He did up his belt, holster now in place.  He was smiling like he didn’t have a care in the world.  “That deputy out there—you didn’t bribe him to do shit.  You put a bullet in him.  Or some other such thing.”

“A knife,” Warren said.  He was almost impressed.  “After he proved too high-and-mighty and law-and-order-minded to take the money.  How’d you figure on that?”

“You’ve got a cautious streak, for one.  I don’t suppose you’d go around committing indecencies when you had a good chance of getting caught.”

“You’re saying ‘for one’ like there’s a ‘for two.’”

“For two,” Mannix said, and now at least he looked a little less happy-go-lucky, looked a little irritated, in fact, “when they put me in this joint, I didn’t say shit about my daddy to that poor deputy or anybody else.  So you lied.”  He rolled one sleeve back and looked at the bloodstain the cuffs had made on his wrist.  “And ruined my favorite fucking shirt.”

“That’s a poor fucking shirt to be anybody’s favorite anything.  And you did half of that to yourself.”

“I suppose I did.”

And damned if he didn’t look just a little proud of himself for it, which was foolish but more bearable, Warren supposed, than him running off again like some scandalized maiden.  He was a good lay and not the worst partner a man could have had, but Warren really would get Jody Domingre to shoot his fucking balls off for good before he chased Chris Mannix down a second time.  Once was more than enough, and at least he’d made Chris pay out that favor with interest.

“We going to make it out of here without getting spotted?” Mannix said, like Warren had bound himself to him by blood oath and they were now in everything together.  “Or did you wind up getting a price on your head same as me?”

“It’s a sleepy little place, especially in the middle of the fucking night.  It’s my opinion we’ll make it out without anyone being the wiser about what happened to you.  And then if I’m ever hard up for cash, I can always turn you in myself.”

“Sure,” Mannix said, unruffled.  “That’s sound moneymaking.  Just come get me again.”

Warren laughed.  It had been him laughing that had set Mannix off the first time, but Mannix didn’t budge now, which meant, unfortunately, that Warren could see his point without him even having to argue it.  Warren had broken Chris Mannix of quite a few habits, it seemed, but he’d slipped up and let Mannix give him a new one in return, namely, giving a shit at all about what happened to him.  Liking the way he moaned and the way he bruised up and the way he smiled when gunplay started, and liking all that just about enough to circle around to plain liking him.

Wasn’t that just the kind of thing to ruin a fucking evening.  Warren shook his head, never-minding it even to himself.  There were some things it just didn’t pay to think about.  They had enough trouble as it was.


End file.
